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Language Change

This chapter explores the mechanisms and reasons behind language change, including the spread of changes, natural tendencies, and therapeutic changes that restore previous patterns. It discusses how changes can interact and trigger one another, complicating the understanding of language evolution. Additionally, the chapter touches on methods used by linguists to reconstruct historical stages of languages lacking written records.

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Naufal Abdurroziq
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14 views6 pages

Language Change

This chapter explores the mechanisms and reasons behind language change, including the spread of changes, natural tendencies, and therapeutic changes that restore previous patterns. It discusses how changes can interact and trigger one another, complicating the understanding of language evolution. Additionally, the chapter touches on methods used by linguists to reconstruct historical stages of languages lacking written records.

Uploaded by

Naufal Abdurroziq
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

LINGUSTICS –

LANGUAGE CHANGE
LANGUAGE CHANGE

This chapter considers how and why language changes. It also lists the
main methods used to reconstruct past stages of languages for which
written records are sparse or unavailable.
LANGUAGE CHANGE

• Spread of change within a language


• How language changes
The spread of a change through a language is a
Changes spread from one human being to another topic which at one time seemed even more
often because humans tend to want to talk like mysterious than its spread through a population.
others they admire and respect. One puzzling phenomenon was the so-called ‘
Change inevitably involves variant forms while it is regularity ’ of sound change. If one sound changes,
in progress, so speech variation is often a sign that the alteration does not only occur in an isolated
a change is taking place. word. It affects all similar words in which the same
sound occurs.
LANGUAGE CHANGE

• Causes of language change


• Natural tendencies
There are certain tendencies inherent in language,
which possibly get triggered by social factors, but There are numerous natural tendencies, and some
which are there waiting in the wings, as it were, for of them are stronger than others. They can be
something to set them off, as with an avalanche: a triggered by social factors, or may be held at bay for
lone skier who disturbed the snow was perhaps the centuries, perhaps held in check bytendencie
immediate trigger, but deeper underlying causes opposing tendencies.
already existed, before that skier arrived.
LANGUAGE CHANGE

• Therapeutic changes
Therapeutic changes restore patterns which have • Changes that trigger one another
been damaged by previous changes. A number of Changes sometimes occur in linked sequences –
examples of this are provided by the use of analogy though it is difficult to tell which sound moved fi
, reasoning from parallel cases, which is a rst, and consequently whether we are dealing with
fundamental feature of human language. pattern maintenance via a drag chain, or a push
Analogy, defined as reasoning from parallel cases, chain.
can sometimes restore broken patterns.
LANGUAGE CHANGE

• Reconstruction
• Interacting changes In this way, we might be able to reconstruct a
So far, the changes examined have been fairly probable history of these languages stretching over
straightforward. But some types of change are hundreds, andperhaps even thousands of years.
more complex. In order to give some idea of the In this chapter, we have considered how and why
numerous factors sometimes involved in a language language changes. We have also briefl y looked at
change, let us fi nally look at some interacting how linguists reconstruct past stages for which they
changes. have no written evidence. This process will be
discussed further in the next chapter.

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